Vacuum trucks have come into common usage in the field of industrial cleaning. This field includes, for illustrative purposes, tank cleaning, cleaning of processing machinery, pits, open-areas, and, in some cases, spillage. Examples of vacuum truck systems that are designed for various end uses can be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,112,439; 5,195,852; and 4,200,950.
Many advances have been made in vacuum truck systems to improve their effectiveness and versatility in cleaning projects. The vacuum units themselves have seen improvements in suctioning power and the like.
In addition to general technological advances related to the actual vacuum system, accessories have been developed to increase the usefulness of the vacuum truck system, such as special sewer-service hoses and cleaning nozzles, containment boxes to receive vacuumed product, and receiving tanks for vacuum trucks which are capable of elevating and dumping material.
Notwithstanding that vacuum trucks are known to be suitable for use in tank cleaning, and notwithstanding the rather substantial investment required to acquire a vacuum truck system and one or more of the noted accessories, there has been essentially no effort to provide means disposed in the tank itself for more efficiently using a vacuum truck in tank cleaning operations. The “in tank” equipment commonly employed includes a traditional vacuum hose with a stick taped to it with masking tape, so that the stick can be moved through settled solid or semi-solid material to break up the material, which is then vacuumed away by the hose. In addition, picks, shovels, and rakes have been brought into the tank being cleaned to handle and move material to be vacuumed through the hose.
A principal advantage in using a vacuum truck system for cleaning is that the system rapidly moves material when it is introduced into the vacuum hose. Heretofore, in tank cleaning operations, the full effectiveness of a vacuum truck system has not been attained. The manual process of breaking up and moving the material to the vacuum hose with sticks, picks, shovels or rakes is slow, and the vacuum truck system is capable of handling and removing much more material than is manually prepared for removal by the vacuum system.
It is therefore a principal object of the present invention to provide an apparatus to be used inside a tank in a tank cleaning operation which utilizes a greater amount of the capacity of a vacuum removal system.
It is a further important object of the present invention to provide a tank cleaning apparatus that replaces most manual efforts in preparing material in the tank for removal by a vacuum removal system.